Customer feedback is important for any business. It tells you what your customers think about your products or services; if you have met their expectations or surpassed them; and what you can do to improve. It’s both a marketing tool and a development tool used to improve customer relations and improve the business at the same time. Therefore, every business should make it a priority.
The customer feedback process starts with the collection phase. You are likely already familiar with the different methods of feedback collection, such as email surveys, customer interviews, and net promoter score surveys. But what about the tools that you can use to employ these methods?
Here are some of the best tech solutions that can help you deliver feedback collection methods much easier and more effectively:
1. Interactive touchscreen displays
You can’t exactly maximize the voice of the customer or VOC feedback if you don’t make it easy for customers to give you feedback. One of the best ways to make giving feedback as convenient as possible is by providing interactive touchscreen displays in physical stores. Interactive displays naturally attract attention, which can increase the likelihood of customers approaching it and answering the feedback questions. More importantly, they are very easy to use, allowing customers to provide their feedback in a minute or less.
Aside from gathering feedback, interactive touchscreen displays can also be used to collect emails for the email list, promote products, announce sales or discounts, and display promo codes that customers can use online.
2. WiFi surveys
If your business offers free WiFi to customers, an excellent way to solicit feedback is to prompt them with a survey when they sign in to the network. However, avoid making it a mandatory survey, as people will be likely to check random boxes to connect to the WiFi as quickly as possible. Instead, leave a link to the survey on the landing page or have a push notification show up asking them if they want to participate.
Unfortunately, not a lot of people are willing to answer a survey when they just want to get WiFi. You can entice them by offering an exclusive deal or a small store discount in exchange for completing the survey. And since they are already in the store, they would be more willing to participate since there is a possibility to receive an instant reward.
3. Text surveys
What if your business doesn’t offer in-store WiFi? You can still prompt customers to participate in your feedback collection through text prompts using technology. But first, you have to collect their contact information. There are many ways you can do this, such as asking for contact info for reward cards, promo codes, or exclusive discounts.
After collecting your customers’ phone numbers, you can set up a geofence around the premises that will send them texts only when they walk through the door. To increase the chances of customers actually answering the text survey, you can advertise a special deal or discount in exchange for participating, be it through posters, touchscreen displays, or signs near the counter.
4. Digital receipts
Many businesses are already offering their customers the option of sending digital receipts instead of paper ones, an effort to decrease paper waste and make the transaction as fast as possible. If you haven’t adopted this practice yet, it’s high time that you jump on the trend.
Apart from saving paper costs, there is another added business benefit of issuing digital receipts, and that is the fact that you can insert a survey link on the email containing your customers’ receipts. But just like any other method of feedback collection, customers aren’t often willing to complete surveys.
Similarly, you can entice customers to participate in a lot of different ways. You could state in the email how long the survey will take (the shorter, the better), and what’s in it for them (perhaps a discount or a free item on their next purchase). Moreover, don’t forget to include a call-to-action in your email and add personalization to make your customer feel appreciated. You can also send them an automated reply to thank them for their feedback, something that not only enhances your brand reputation but also increases the chances of that customer coming back for more.
In the modern age, collecting customer feedback no longer involves tedious processes. Digital technology makes it easier for businesses to know what their customers are saying, which they can then use to improve products, services, and operations as a whole. And with the tech solutions mentioned above, we can only expect customer feedback technology to improve as technology continues to develop at a breakneck speed.